‘Memory of a Killer’ Boss Teases Ferryman Reveal: It’s a ‘Compelling Metaphor’

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Memory of a Killer Season 1 Episode 2 “Ferryman.”]

Uh-oh, Angelo (Patrick Dempsey) messed up the two parts of his life again on Memory of a Killer — and we’re only two episodes in!

In the Monday, January 26, episode, he accidentally leaves a news clipping in his suburban dad persona’s jacket about a target of his hitman side’s — and his daughter, Maria (Odeya Rush), finds it. She doesn’t bring it up with him, but he does find it in the pocket when she returns it, hinting that he knows that she knows something.

Meanwhile, both Angelo and the FBI’s Grant (Gina Torres) are investigating who tried to kill Maria, with the former making more progress: He learns the name, the Ferryman, from both the hitman who took the shot and the man who killed his wife (and is now out of prison) and is brought in for questioning after threatening Maria in court. Angelo’s not sharing any of what happened with Dutch (Michael Imperioli), his best friend and hitman persona’s handler.

Below, co-showrunner and executive producer Aaron Zelman breaks down the second episode, teases who the Ferryman is, and more. (Read a breakdown of the series premiere with Zelman here.)

Maria finding that news clipping in the jacket was great. Angelo seems to be, at the end there, realizing he made a mistake and that he’s not keeping the two parts of his life as separate as he needs to. But at this point, what is she thinking about her father and what does he think that she knows at the end of Episode 2? Have either of them put all of it together yet?

Aaron Zelman: No, certainly we don’t think so. We like to leave things up to the audience to decide, so I don’t want to steer people too much. They can take away what they want from what we’re seeing at the end of Episode 2 there. But I will tease that it’s not something that’s less to off where it is. It’s something that develops. So you’ll get a lot more information about what they know and what they don’t know. But one of the things that Glenn [Kessler] and I love to do as storytellers — we didn’t create the show, but we certainly shaped the story of the first season tremendously —is let characters lie to other characters to themselves and let an audience try to figure out how much they know and don’t know until … It adds mystique, I suppose, what I’m saying to the characters that we find really interesting.

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And in this particular case, you’ve got a pretty big liar, a guy who leads a double life and hides each side from the other. Well, you kind of wonder if his daughter isn’t a chip off the old block a little bit, and is she pretty good at lying, too? And that’s one of the things we are interested in exploring and the season does explore.

What can you say about this Ferryman who hired Henry? Because my mind went to Charon in Greek mythology, the ferryman of the underworld.

Well, you’re very smart, well-educated. That is definitely something that will be explored and explained. Let’s just say that was a good instinct. And the question is, what does that mean? What does it mean that somebody goes by the name of this figure in Greek mythology, and what do they represent? Again, this is not Glenn and my idea. We inherited this from the creators of the show, but we found it to be a very compelling metaphor, which will be revealed if you keep watching the season.

Can you say if we’ve seen this person? How much do we really know about Dutch?

Interesting. Yeah, I think that’s a spoiler I won’t reveal. I won’t say one way or another, but I think that it’s going to be surprising, and it’s going to be a fun guessing game as we go through the season about who the Ferryman is and what they want and what it can all mean, which will hopefully drive a lot of the interest for watching the whole season.

Joe (Richard Harmon) seems to be somewhat incompetent or at least just not ready for this line of work. What can you say about how honest he is around Angelo when it comes to that we’ve seen so far?

Well, it does seem that he’s not quite ready for this maybe, or he may be maybe not totally suited for it. It’s really unclear. And as a result, and maybe the principal reason actually, it’s more of a cause than a result, is that he is not totally honest with himself and Angelo always about when he messes up or when he doesn’t know things. And so that’s a classic, to us, mentor-protege relationship. And as with all mentor-protege relationships, there are questions about whether the protege will ever learn to master the skills he needs to become a master himself or whether he won’t make the cut. And that’s another dynamic that plays throughout the season, and we feel ends in a really satisfying, dramatic way by the end of the season.

Because the conversation that Angela and Dutch had about him, my mind is like, could he have another agenda for Dutch when it comes to Angelo? Because of what we’ve been talking about with trust.

Yeah, I think those are all the right questions you should be asking as you watch these episodes. It’s a thriller. The way that Glenn and I think about thriller storytelling is each character has their own agenda, and that agenda is usually hidden from other people and often hidden even from themselves. And it’s the process of peeling those layers of what they really are up to, what they really want, that is what is compelling to watch. And we try to structure stories around those reveals of character so that everything we’re doing dramatically in terms of the plotting and the storytelling is really in service of revealing more and more about who these characters are so that you care more and more about them, are more and more interested in them and want to know where they’re going and what they’re really made of and how they really feel about themselves and others.

Christos Kalohoridis/Fox

What’s Grant’s first impression of Angelo? Does she immediately sense something in him because she comments on his reaction and running toward danger?

Yeah, she certainly seems to be, I don’t know, suspicious is too strong a word, but interested in him in a way that suggests she does have her own agenda — again, going back to the idea of agenda. So that’s a mystery. What’s that about? Is that just a cop’s kind of intuition? Or, often, police or law enforcement, they kind of mess with people a little bit just to see what happens to see if there’s anything that they can glean from their reaction. So it may just be as simple as that, but you’ll have to keep watching to see if she really is onto him and how she’s able to be a thorn in his side, which, certainly, I can tease that she won’t give up. Let me put it that way.

Grant talks about knowing what it’s like to lose someone you love suddenly. Is that a mystery that’s going to be unpacked over the course of the season? My first thought, of course, is a victim of Angelo’s.

That’s unclear, right? I won’t deny or confirm it, but the reason that she mentions it could be just a way to bond with a person who’s gone through something, a victim of crime. She may be making it all up, for all we know. Again, law enforcement has a lot of leeway in terms of how they conduct interviews, and they are really allowed to lie. So you can never totally be sure in that situation in a scene like that.

I liked getting a taste of what Angelo and Dutch are as friends without all the hitman business in that conversation outside the restaurant before Dutch’s surprise party. How important is it for you to show that throughout this show, and how much are we going to continue to see moments like that?

Yeah, that’s a really important relationship as part of the conception of the show, and it’s a complicated one, right? They do seem to just like each other. They have an affinity for each other. They certainly have a history, a long history, which we’ll learn more about it as the season progresses, but let’s just say they have trust issues with each other, and the question is whether or not a relationship like that can survive those trust issues, given that there’s so much positive as well.

But we’re going to continue to see moments like that, where we do see them just as friends outside of this whole hitman business?

Yeah, there will be other moments like that.

Memory of a Killer, Mondays, 9/8c, Fox